Instead it would involve ethnic breakdowns at different levels of seniority, he said.

He told the newspaper: “You could also have some sort of voluntary code for listed companies to say, if you’ve taken on 10 people this year and you had 100 interviews and you had 1,000 people who applied, can we see the breakdown by gender and ethnic balance?”

Kris Hopkins, MP for Keighley and a leader of the 301 group of Tory MPs urging the party hierarchy to reach out to non-traditional Conservative voters, added that the party’s problem with ethnic minorities was still an issue.